Meghan Markle once wanted to be more like Ivanka Trump

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Ivanka Trump, the daughter and assistant to US President Donald Trump, delivers a speech at the World Assembly for Women (WAW!) in Tokyo on November 3, 2017.
Ivanka Trump spoke at the World Assembly for Women in the Japanese capital ahead of her father’s presidential visit. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / Eugene HoshikoEUGENE HOSHIKO/AFP/Getty Images

Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement last month (Photo by Chris Jackson/Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

Still, Markle had a regular acting gig and that’s a huge accomplishment in the grueling entertainment industry. Moreover, she had begun to carve out two promising alternative career tracks — as an advocate for women’s empowerment in the global arena and as a lifestyle guru.

With her lifestyle blog, The Tig, the pretty, peppy Markle shared recipes, travel tips and general thoughts on how to lead a happy, balanced life.

But with all Markle had thus far accomplished, she still felt she needed to do more — to be more. And who did she look to for inspiration?

Ivanka Trump.

That’s right, the daughter of Donald Trump, who would launch his controversial presidential campaign the following year. His words and actions as a candidate would prompt the staunchly feminist Markle to eventually call Ivanka Trump’s father “divisive” and “misogynistic” in an interview in 2016, a few months before she began to date Harry.

Rick Hoffman and Meghan Markle at a promotional event for “Suits” in 2013 (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images)

But back to 2014: That’s when Markle wrote glowingly on The Tig about her admiration for Ivanka Trump and her desire to learn from Ivanka and be more like her.

“Staggeringly beautiful, no question, but so incredibly savvy and intelligent that she’s not just carved a niche for herself under her father’s famed Trump notoriety, she has undoubtedly created her own empire,” Markle wrote in her introduction to what would turn out to be a brief email conversation with Ivanka Trump that she posted on The Tig.

Her introduction included a vow that she would get together for drinks with Ivanka Trump the next time she was in New York.

“This much I know – when we have drinks, I will make sure I order whatever she does – because this woman seems to have the formula for success (and happiness) down pat,” Markle wrote.

Markle shuttered The Tig, once it became clear that things were getting serious with Harry, but pages from the site are available online.

In this introduction, she also praised Ivanka Trump for not being like other children of privilege. She noted that Trump didn’t party as a teenager or run amok. Instead, she graduated from the Wharton School, and almost immediately went to work for her father’s real estate company. She also built her own line of clothing and jewelry, which Markle admitted she liked to gaze at on her computer, “staring longingly at the beautiful designs.”

When Markle had her email chat with Ivanka Trump, the real estate heiress was also a wife and mother.

“She does it all,” Markle raved, saying she so much wanted to ask this “powerful and successful” woman how she manages to juggle work, to be a wife and mom and to take care of herself — that is, how she straddles “the line between letting yourself go or looking like you just stepped off a runway (or at least had the time to put some lipstick on).”

Actually, her email questions to Trump and the replies she received from the future first daughter and White House assistant were not terribly illuminating.

Trump shared that the first thing she does when she wakes up in the morning is brush her teeth and meditate for 15 minutes — “unless it is a screaming baby rather than an alarm clock that is waking me.”

Trump also said she can’t live without her husband, Jared Kushner, her “sweet” children and her ChapStick. She added that she likes nothing more than taking her husband and daughter for an ice-cream date and, if she had one week to escape, she would go to Patagonia.

We’ll probably never know if Markle and Trump ever got together for drinks, or if Markle ever got any advice on how to have it all.

But, of course, a lot has happened in the three years since that email exchange, and it seems that Markle has done pretty well for herself.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attend a wheelchair tennis match during the Invictus Games 2017. (Chris Jackson/Getty Images for the Invictus Games Foundation)

She just got engaged to Harry. She’s set to made history by being the first American to marry into the British royal family since the 1930s.

Harry, of course, is the grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and the younger brother of Prince William, instantly making Markle one of the most famous famous women in the world, along with William’s wife, Kate Middleton. Markle is set to have a royal wedding in May and, for the rest of her life, she can count on being a global fashion icon and widely admired for whatever good works she decides to dedicate herself to as Harry’s wife.

Unfortunately for Ivanka Trump’s trajectory, her father has become one of the most divisive and controversial presidents in U.S. history. In some ways, he’s become the president that Markle predicted.

This has left Trump, Markle’s one-time female role model, to become reviled by feminists and other progressives, who view her as “complicit” in an incompetent, corrupt, nepotistic and dangerous White House administration.

In considering the divergence of the two women’s fates, The Daily Beast’s Erin Gloria Ryan argued this week that the situation is now reversed. It’s now Markle who has become poised to become what Ivanka Trump has always wanted to be: a princess.

“Ivanka wanted to be a princess, a denizen of photo-ops and collectible dishes Middle America can order from Parade magazine, like Princess Diana,” Ryan wrote, “a person beloved and celebrated like royalty, and immune to the critical eye of the political media. Problem is, there’s no ‘princess’ position in the executive branch.”

Ivanka Trump and husband, Jared Kushner, who is senior adviser to the president, board Marine One at the White House in March. (Mandel Ngan/AFP Photo)

Markle’s life has been marked by “advocacy and grit” — unlike that of Ivanka Trump, who had never shown any interest in advocacy, policy or politics, Ryan said.

Indeed, the proudly biracial Markle worked her way out of her middle-class San Fernando Valley background and into a place at top-ranked Northwestern University. She struggled to find work as an actress, landing gigs as a model on a TV game show like “Deal or No Deal,” before winning a regular role on a TV drama.

Meghan had also been making her mark in humanitarian circles for a number of years, doing work with organizations such as World Vision, the United Nations, One Young World and Myna Mahila Foundation to gender equality. For International Women’s Day, she penned an essay for Time’s website that the global stigma around menstruation.

Meanwhile, Trump only seemed to show an interest in advocating for women when she saw an opportunity to market her brand under the #womenwhowork hashtag. Her time in the White House has been marked by controversy and accusations of nepotism and conflicts of interest. She also has repeatedly failed to stand up for principles she claims to care about, notably gender equality.

“There is something uniquely 2017 fever-dreamy about the divergence of Ivanka and Markle’s fates,” Ryan writes. “Markle, a working actress who once held a briefcase on ‘Deal Or No Deal,’ gets to retire from the thornier parts of politics and into a life of a princess. Meanwhile, Ivanka, the telegenic heiress of the man behind ‘The Art of the Deal’ has found herself queen of the frogs.”

Martha Ross is a features writer who covers everything and anything related to popular culture, society, health, women’s issues and families. A native of the East Bay and a graduate of Northwestern University and Mills College, she’s also a former hard-news and investigative reporter, covering crime and local politics.